I've been having a fair bit of fun with these two games the last month, as they were released pretty much at the same time here - making me have to choose which one to play.
The initial choice was which of the packages I was going for in terms of new instruments. I had tried the Rock Band 2 guitar before, and wasn't too fond of that - despite it being a lot better than the Rock Band one. I checked some reviews online and figured that they'd most likely work out nicely, so, I got the GH:WT Full Instrument package, with a pre-order deal which gave included another guitar free of charge.
Turns out the guitar in itself is quite nice, and has taken over from my previous favored guitar (Xbox/PC GH2), as the buttons are just nice and "working", the strum-bar isn't screwed up like the Rock Band ones. It even has a very large accessible select button to help you pull starpower whenever! This latest feature was one I was quite fond of, but, after playing a bit I found myself not using this button at all, as this guitar has a rock solid motion sensor which has activated starpower 100% of the times I wanted it to, whereas the previous one could have you waving the guitar for quite some time before this would go off.
The drum-kit is quite nice looking really, with 5 drumpads, 2 of them elevated and the pedal. The pads seem to be covered with something quite squishylooking - resulting in you being able to play much more quietly than the Rock Band drums. Still, if you smash fairly hard, you'll make a lot of noise regardless, but, there's the option at least.
The game is quite standard-ish as far as these games go now, you play songs through different stages, unlock more songs, play these, do battles with famous characters and live happily ever after!
To list a few differences from the old GH-series (apart from the inclusion of drums/mic), you no longer do battles where you try to sabotage the other guy, instead these are pretty much regular songs where you feel like you're trying to outperform each other it seems.
The new guitar has a new touchpad-like set of buttons just below the regular buttons which you can use during solos, in these sections, you have the option of simply sliding your fingers between the notes to connect them, there's even a "string" visualized on the screen which connects these. This in itself worked out surprisingly well in my view, however, when you're supposed to switch back to the normal buttons after a solo, you're most likely never going to hit the first few ones at least, which results in you usually just using the regular buttons for solos anyway.
An interesting fact regarding this, as I saw others complaining about this as well, after I had played through my single career - I did a quick run through the tutorial to unlock an achievement there, and found that you could actually use the touchpad as a strum-bar, which would make it a whole lot easier to survive when you go back to non-solo sections. If only I had done that...
The songs in World Tour are a bit so-so really, as far as singing goes, they should really be a bit more careful throwing in non-english songs into the mix. I decided to start the vocals career to see how that worked out, and found myself jumping back to the main menu quite quick - not sure Beastie Boys and Motorhead are the best "introduction to vocals"-bands out there. I did a quickplay list and managed to find a total of 5 songs of the whole list which I'd feel slightly comfortable singing - and - that's not a lot.
Don't get me wrong, it has some decent songs, I really like the live version of Sweet Home Alabama and other songs like Pull Me Under and Livin' on a Prayer add to it, but, if you were to pick a random song, there's a good 90% chance that you'll end up with something either completely screwed up, or just plain horrible in my view.
The difficulty level is quite decent as far as the guitar goes, there are a total of 4 songs I haven't been able to finish on Expert yet, which should be somewhat similar to GH3 really, placing it slightly above Rock Band in that regard.
All in all, I'd say this is a decent product, but, the first thing I'd get after shopping this game with its full instrument package would be Rock Band 1 and 2...
... also, I think I like Paramore ...